Martin Hall appears to be the figure who defined the Danish New Wave scene, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that any of the projects he worked in found much traction outside of Denmark. Ballet Mecanique was one such project, And Then Again was another; of course, there were a couple of solo outings too. Pesteg Dred was a very short-lived project, as the trio that revolved around Hall got together in 1981 with electronics wrangler Per Hendrichsen and vocalist Inge Shannon. During one weekend, the three landed in a studio and banged out an album but didn't have the ability to pay the bill. So the tapes sat until Hall could negotiate something with the owners of the studio. A cassette of the material surfaced as a bonus with an art magazine in 1985, but otherwise, the recordings languished while all three members went onto other projects. We've never heard of any of Hall's other projects; but if any were half as good as Pesteg Dred, they'd be worth the price of admission.
The dark storm of post-punk had certainly come to Denmark, with Hall admitting an early infatuation with Cabaret Voltaire and A Certain Ratio (well, he did name one his later projects And Then Again after an A Certain Ratio tune); but The Pop Group and The Ex must have made a big impact as well. The band is essentially a mutant rhythm section of rumbling, discordant funk basslines and unschooled percussive fills that showcase way more fury than skill, with a series of weirdly skittered electronics flushed between the rhythms with murky modular sweeps, distorted drones, and delay-rippled bloop. Inge's vocals are a cold monotone bellow that aren't too far from Bettina Koster of Malaria, making a perfect fit for the darkly, cacophonous agit-punk of Pesteg Dred. The lengthy "Light, More Light" is very much in the vein of the best A Certain Ratio, with breakneck post-disco rhythm, neck-strangling basslines, jittery guitars, and even some atonal blurts from a trumpet. Death disco? You bet!
Dark Entries scores yet again with a really great re-discovery on Pested Dred.
Martin Hall appears to be the figure who defined the Danish New Wave scene, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that any of the projects he worked in found much traction outside of Denmark. Ballet Mecanique was one such project, And Then Again was another; of course, there were a couple of solo outings too. Both Pesteg Dred and SS-Say were very short-lived projects in the early '80s. Pesteg Dred was a trio that revolved around Hall in 1981 with electronics wrangler Per Hendrichsen and vocalist Inge Shannon. During one weekend, the three landed in a studio and banged out an album but didn't have the ability to pay the bill. So the tapes sat until Hall could negotiate something with the owners of the studio. A cassette of the material surfaced as a bonus with an art magazine in 1985, but otherwise, the recordings languished while all three members went onto other projects.
The dark storm of post-punk had certainly come to Denmark, with Hall admitting an early infatuation with Cabaret Voltaire and A Certain Ratio (well, he did name one of his later projects And Then Again after an A Certain Ratio tune), but The Pop Group and The Ex must have made a big impact as well. The band is essentially a mutant rhythm section of rumbling, discordant funk basslines and unschooled percussive fills that showcase way more fury than skill, with a series of weirdly skittered electronics flushed between the rhythms with murky modular sweeps, distorted drones, and delay-rippled bloop. Inge's vocals are a cold monotone bellow that aren't too far from Bettina Koster of Malaria, making a perfect fit for the darkly, cacophonous agit-punk of Pesteg Dred. The lengthy "Light, More Light" is very much in the vein of the best A Certain Ratio, with breakneck post-disco rhythm, neck-strangling basslines, jittery guitars, and even some atonal blurts from a trumpet.
SS-Say released only one single in 1985, and that material rounds out the cd. Here, Hall is working again with Inge Shannon, for a more baroque, anthemic number wrought with Siouxsie-esque operatics and wah-wah guitar scratching above the catwalk disco rhythms. With its cocaine strung synths, "Care" is definitely the gem amongst the SS-Say tracks, which showcase much more polish as a Studio 54 / Batcave hybrid than Pesteg Dred, but with just as much post-punk bombast.
The Pesteg Dred material was reissued by Dark Entries on vinyl in 2010, and now it's available on cd for the first time with the SS-Say tracks that didn't appear on the lp reish.
Depths is the latest blast of grim melodic blackness from this Aussie black metal horde, and the first we've reviewed on the list. This came highly recommended by weirdo black metaller the Botanist, and for fans of dense blasting buzz infused with plenty of moodiness and melody, you'd be hard pressed to do better than these guys. Just check out the opening track, pretty much everything we love about black metal, the sound is dense and murky, the guitars are thick and buzzy, the drums pounding and furious, the vocals an anguished how buried in the mix, the arrangement constantly shifting, from the opening salvo, a face melting black blast, to the more midtempo majesty of the middle stretch, replete with soaring epic guitar melodies, to an abstract, clean guitar spacey interlude, an back again, PS infuse their furious blackness with a surprising amount of emotion, giving the impression that with the drums and guitars stripped away, this might sound like Godspeed or Explosions In The Sky, that same sort of brooding, slow building intensity, which sound even cooler here, wedded to thick black guitars, and churning buzzing heaviness.
The band do introduce some cool twists, surprising almost clean vocals, draped over some ultra melodic almost Katatonia sounding riffage at one point, and chugging pop flecked almost Khold style grooves here and there, but those elements are definitely not the focal point, there guys are all about blast and buzz, howl and crush, the sound is epic and massive and heavy and BLACK, a glancing listen, and you might think this was just a wall of furious buzz, but closer listening reveals all sorts of texture and melody, but without taking away from the power or ferocity, it's almost as if all that melody, and all that sonic moodiness, was unintended, a natural byproduct of this sort of buzz and blast, but it's too well crafted, and too much an integral part of PS's sound, which manages to totally transcend the typical grim buzz of most black metal, offering up something much more epic and melodic, and ultimately way more sonically rewarding.
A short sharp blast of buzzing grim blackness from Canada, from a horde known as Pestkreuz, whose sound is all classic buzz and blast, combining the sound of the early Norwegian greats with some of the more recent modern BM outfits. Think Funeral Mist and Katharsis via Satyricon and Immortal; while this may not be pantheon-worthy as any of those, it's definitely a pretty excellent chunk of orthodox black metal, one that should most certainly hit the spot for all of you who need a dose of furious, frenzied black buzz, there's even some passages that dip into the punkier side of BM, but for the most part, PK engage in the sort of corpse painted, Christ defiling, blast beating, tremolo picking, demonik vokill-ed heaviness, that we (and many of you) can't ever seem to get enough of.
The more we hear from Mr. Stephen Brodsky, frontman of the mighty Cave In, the more we're beginning to wonder if maybe his particular genius was wasted in the context of a sludgy metal band. Or perhaps it was specifically that weird pop genius that made Cave In such a bad ass proposition. And that should have had people more prepared for their eventual shift into bombastic progpop.
Regardless, we've got two Brodsky projects on this week's list, the psychedelic power pop of Brodsky's Octave Museum, and this brand new disc right here, that sounds like some weird hybrid between Elope, Queens Of The Stone Age, The Beatles, XTC, Kyuss and the White Stripes... If that's even possible, and on repeated listening
This disc is pretty all over the map, some tracks are jangly and dreamy, others are crunchy and super heavy, many are both. But it's the perfect pop songwriting that holds all of these disparate sounds together. And perfect pop they are.
We were pretty much sold 10 seconds in, the opener is a barnstormer, a killer riff, with a lurching stop start verse, and some Beatles-esque falsetto vocals, all wrapped around one of the most killer hooks ever! The second track is more blessed out, folky and very British sounding, with epic melodic swells, and more falsetto vocals, gentle acoustic strum and some playful vocal guitar interplay. But track three, "Walls Of Etiquette is the gem here, and most likely the single, if records like this actually have 'singles', groovy and stoner, with a slithery riff, keening vocals, a super catchy melody, and a churning super intense grinding metallic refrain, and a chorus to die for. Very reminiscent of Queens Of The Stone Age back when they were AWESOME. A lot of this record reminds us of that amazing Open Hand record we raved about a few years back. "Man Of The Mountain" is another killer, beginning with a crunchy metal intro, before slipping into a dreamy folky drift, all poppy shimmer and irresistible hooks.
The rest of the record plays out in a pretty similar fashion, with Brodsky pitting his Beatlesy pop heart against his distorted desert axe, the results pretty tough to beat. And this is one of those records we just gave a cursory listen to, but soon found ourselves spinning it over and over EVERY day. No better recommendation than that...
Petals is the long germinating shoegaze electronica project of former aQ-er Cameron "Edge Of Sanity" Octigan, a dark, dolorous set of songs that owe as much to the blown out noise pop of groups like My Bloody Valentine and the Jesus And Mary Chain as it does to the blurred bliss pop ambience of Gas and other minimal electronic technicians. The opening track here is very reminiscent of Gas, all hushed minimal melodies, a heartbeat like techno pulse, a muted throb buried in the murk, everything wrapped in a thick patina of gauzy whir and bleary shimmer, which quickly gives way to the first song proper, a warm murky dirge, thick swaths of crunchy low end, buried melancholy melodies, like a shoegaze jam stripped down to its bare components and recast as minimal electronica, hazy almost choral voices seem to drift in and out, give the track an almost witch house vibe. Eventually the drums get a little bit busier, the melodies emerge from the murk, the sound seeming to crystallize and coalesce into an almost proper pop, and then the song splinters into a weird bits of synth pop, all careening dubbed out rhythms, squiggly synths, and those spectral voices, epic and so beautiful.
The rest of the tape is surprisingly varied, while managing to all link together as a strangely cohesive whole, "In Gathering" is a bit of blissed out woozy IDM, given a sort of dream pop makeover, those haunting vocals making a but here processed into haunting high end melodies, all over a whirling soft focus almost house music rhythm, "The Longest Mirror" is the first really beat heavy jam, with a hand clap rhythm draped over a thick buzzing bass, and some hazy dreamy synths, a twisted bit of house-y electro pop, that leads directly into the brief "Only A Thought", which also has a bit of a witch house feel, echoey handclaps hovering in fields if warped synths and electronic glimmer, the sound just drifting and gradually slowing down to a warbly dreamlike drag, until the tape closes with "Everyone's Longest Summer", another primo slab of washed out electro-gaze, but with a haunting ominous undercurrent, strange disembodied voices, a super skeletal high hat rhythm, the whole thing bleary and blissy, and gradually shedding various elements, until just that minimal beat, and then finally, that slowly fading low end buzz...
So great! We really can't imagine Petals will remain a secret for long, in fact, we're sort of shocked this tape is the first anyone will hear, and it's a bit of a tease at 17 minutes, but it has been getting massive repeat plays and definitely has us hankering for more!
If you love the pop sounds of The Posies, the New Pornographers, Sloan and The Shins as we here at aQ surely do, well, we might all be needing to add a new band to our list o' tunesome faves. The band is Peter Bjorn And John, and yes, the three Swedish lads' names are indeed Peter (Moren), Bjorn (Yttling) and John (Eriksson). This is their second full length and it's pretty right on! Their vocals have that 'aw shucks' boyish kind of quality. Y'know, slightly bashful, slightly drowsy, slightly slouchy and totally endearing. In fact, they sorta reminded us of Crowded House and Badly Drawn Boy too. Check 'em out!
This Swedish pop group's third release is finally available domestically and thank God for that as it topped many of our "best of" lists of 2006, By now you must have heard PB & J's infectious single with Victoria Bergsman from the Concretes, "Young Folks" with its catchy off-handed whistling and cute animated video that has been an internet sensation for the past few months. Well, the rest of the album does not disappoint in the least. This is some of the best pop music we've heard in a long time that sounds as fresh as when bands like Blur and Pulp first started garnering attention a decade ago. And they do it so effortlessly by scaling back the guitars in favor of more subtle, economic and hook-laden arrangements, and well-written songs about love and heartbreak that never sound clich�d.
Taking turns on vocal and songwriting duties, the trio are at the top of their game, making Writer's Block a delightfully varied affair as it takes us on a twisted journey through the highs and lows of romance. At times the sound is effervescent as on "Let's Call It Off", at other times it's more brooding as heard on the downbeat synth-heavy "The Chills". This domestic release comes with a bonus second disc of some extra tracks, a couple of remixes and alternate versions of "Let's Call It Off" and "Young Folks", the latter played on sitar! Highly recommended!!!!!!!!!
Easily the very best stuff that Peter Jefferies has done since he collaborated with his brother Graeme in This Kind of Punishment and Nocturnal Projections back in the early 80's. Dark, beautiful, tense instrumentals with guitar, piano, drums, and drones that recall Joy Division at their bleakest.
Peter, Bjorn & John have redeemed themselves bigtime with this new outing! Their last album Living Thing, really sounded flat to our ears and was such a letdown after the thrilling pop they delivered on their breakout album Writer's Block. Well with Gimme Some, these Swedes have returned to the top of their game and it looks like this is going to be a major contender for pop record of the summer and maybe even the year! Ultra catchy melodies and hooks that hit hard, exuberant and energetic, and best of all no filler in the mix, this is what a perfect pop record should sound like. It's a record that has so much zest and an effortless vibe, while also containing some surprisingly rocking moments, and that certain charm that makes the way they craft songs so damn addictive. Who else can incorporate cowbell into one of the best pop songs of the year like they do on "Second Chance"?! This is proving to be one of those pop records like the Pains Of Being Pure At Heart debut or Phoenix's Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. We can't wait to blast this all summer long and beyond!
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Why the hell would you call your band Peterlicker? And even if you did give yourself such a terrible name, why would you keep it after you broke up over 20 years ago, especially when the band in question hardly even managed a couple of practices and maybe one gig? These are the important questions we ask here at aQuarius, and perhaps we can feel justified in asking these questions, since they themselves admit theirs is a stupid band name following the tradition of the Butthole Surfers and Throbbing Gristle.
So, with that discussion out of the way, here at last is the debut LP from Peterlicker, a monstrously good electro-doom-dirge-noise-rock quartet featuring Peter (Pita) Rehberg. While Pita's brain-drilling power electronics are a component of the crawling noise structures in Peterlicker, it's clearly not just his project. F. Hergovich is the vocalist in the band, whose ominous deepthroating vocalizations loom over the entire production, timestretched into undefinable gaping bellows and monstrous Lustmordian howls. C. Schachinger takes his cues from Swans' stalwart guitarist Norman Westberg, in his bent atonal screeches, gritty crackling of white-hot distortion, and dive-bomb arcs of noise that settle upon the ever crawling post-doom basslines of G. Weissegger. Pita and Weissegger fill in the gaps with plenty of crunched noises that buttress the grim arsenal of crusty noise. Imagine Godflesh, if Broadrick forgot to bring his drum machine to the studio, or Swans (circa Cop and Filth) with Gira even more amped up on amphetamines and taking his vocals on a really fucked godhead trip. Needless to say, Nicht is pretty fucking brilliant, regardless of what they chose to call the band.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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A documentary of the rise of the "Chicago Scene" featuring Steve Albini, The Jesus Lizard, Eleventh Dream Day, Red Red Meat, Die Warzau and lots more. Contains live footage.
Black Jazz was a record label based out of Oakland, California in the early seventies and focused on spiritual minded jazz with a community focus, often with funk and soul jazz overtones. We recently reviewed Calvin Keys' Shawn-Neeq record from 1971 and along with some of the recent Black Jazz reissues, there have been some DJ mixes released too, all mined from the label's extensive catalog. We weren't too psyched on the first mix by Japanese DJ Mitsu, but then we got this mix from esteemed BBC radio DJ, Gilles Peterson, and our opinion 180'ed. Peterson has the same reputation in British radio of soul, funk, jazz and international sounds as John Peel did with rock, punk, and post-punk, and his taste here is impeccable. He does do some mixing between songs, but he largely lets the songs go their own lengths without unnecessary intervention. In it, he creates an arc of the label's best sounds that range from exploratory soul jazz, rare groove funk, Latin-inflected rhythms and cosmic spiritual gems. The label was formed by pianist Gene Russell as an antidote to the more skronkier vibe coming out of the east coast, so the sound on Black Jazz has a smoother more melodic quality, but still quite beautiful and engaging with its own unique sound. Definitely the sort of deep sounds our pals at Groove Merchant Records in the Haight have been cultivating and turning people onto for many years. Artists include: The Awakening, Doug Carn, Roland Haynes, Walter Bishop Jr., Kellee Paterson, and Gene Russell, among others.
Petit Mal is the work of Berkeley musician Jim Kaiser, who improvises through a post-Industrial context to arrive at deep hypnotic ambience marred by vocal samples, broken effects, and metallic scrapings. Dark murky drones dominate "A Sense Of Closure," often recalling the densely processed sounds of Troum or Cranioclast. Yet Kaiser is often much looser in his compositions than either of those references, allowing for distortion, misfirings, and analogue errors to accumulate within the overlapping washes of sound. "A Sense Of Closure" is at its best when Kaiser picks up an acoustic guitar to splutter textured strumming not unlike the groundswell of damaged avant-folk (i.e. Neil Campbell, Avarus, Dead Raven Choir, etc.) within the omnipresent dark ambience.
Absolution is another missive of blackened ambience extracted by Bay Area denizen J.Kaiser (aka Petit Mal), once again mining his trusted electro-acoustic set-up of bicycle wheel, shortwave radio, tape loops, and effects. On the first cut "Passover," Kaiser begins with a subterranean gloom, built out of an excess of reverb applied to the metallic scrapes of his bowed bike wheel and incidental noise elements which grate against this mournful bellow that loops out of his reel-to-reel tape deck. Out of this sour atmosphere, Kaiser builds a menacing slab of noise through a series of concussion bomb blasts, thrumbing static from shortwave radio, and squealing divebombs of pierced feedback. The whole piece drips with leaden reverb that further sinks this malcontent set of noise into a depressive, apocalyptic dirge. The much shorter "Other Fields" is also much prettier, although most anything would be pretty next to the ashen bleakness of "Passover." Somber piano notes hang in space against a clatter of wooden objects being randomly tossed in an abandoned warehouse with some tape manipulation in the distance of undefined captured dialogue. File somewhere between Lethe, Anenzephalia, and The New Blockaders. Super limited.
Ascetics is probably the best thing we've heard from Jim Kaiser's Petit Mal project or any of the various collaborations he's done with like-minded Bay Area improvisers and noise tacticians. There's long been a dourness to his junkyard concoctions, but that attitude really seems to click on this short program 3". An overlapping drone from what could be generated from Kaiser's ever-present bicycle wheel, which he has bowed and banged for many years now. The strategy here seems to be less banging and more bowing, or at least extracting the resonant hues from that commonplace object and working those sounds into a thickened drone. On the first piece, Kaiser couples this with a downtuned acoustic guitar strumming, which harkens back to those few records on which Zoviet France sent acoustic guitar chords through their mottled bank of tape delay mechanics. At the same time, there's something sorrowfully doom-y about this track. The second piece lightens things up, but only a little bit, as the predominant tone is of an oppressive haze congealed out of tape hiss, distant amplifier destruction, and traffic noise. On top of this, Kaiser situates a melancholy slow-motion score for piano for a much grittier re-interpretation of Brian Eno's classic Thursday Afternoon. Fantastic stuff here, and super limited to boot!
This live recording from the East Bay denizen Petit Mal (aka J. Kaiser) is much better once removed from the performance space in which it was recorded. Not that there's anything wrong with the Luggage Store per se, but that these dark subterranean rumbles, distance bits of radio transmission, and echoes persisting in a damp gloominess contradict the Luggage Store gallery's crisp white walls and huge windows overlooking San Francisco's Market Street. It's better to consider this performance some apocalyptic ritual recorded out in the industrial wastelands elsewhere in the Bay Area, maybe out near Suisun Bay where the US Navy sends its old World War II era ships to slowly leach their heavy metals into the water and soil.
As on many of Kaiser's projects (NF Orchest, French Radio, and his collaborations with Angela Hsu), the sounds are generated through a reel-to-reel tape, a shortwave radio, and his well-worn bicycle wheel which he plays with a violin bow, achieving similarly dissonant bellows that Organum produced through an ensemble of bowed cymbals. Kaiser's work is more Spartan than Organum's, though with these mournful tones which emit through the metallic shimmer, drone, and scrape, resonating really as if they were transmitting through the hull of one of those rusting ships in Suisun Bay. Limited as is always the case with Kaiser's series of 3" discs.
In recent weeks, Bay Area experimentalist Jim Kaiser offered us a couple of collaborative discs with violinist Angela Hsu; and now's he gotten around to releasing his own work under the moniker Petit Mal. As with his collaboration with Hsu, Kaiser's principle instruments for Petit Mal are the reel-to-reel tape machine and a collection of found metal. There had been a handful of obscurely published albums of mysterious drones and growling electronics that Kaiser issued as Petit Mal, but this is the first we've seen in quite a long time. Sensory Deprivation begins with a crawling rhythm of tape machine noise that seems to share a similar technique as Terry Riley's time lag accumulation devices, although Kaiser's roughly handled noises have the same brutalism as found in Wolf Eyes or Esplendor Geometrico. The next two tracks contain murky depressive drownings of sound, as if Kaiser's tape loops were pulled from the bottom of tar pit and forced through his machines, muck and all. Snippets of conversation pull away from the general torpor, with interjections of varispeed warbling and iron-clad screeches of bowed metal downcast in billowing clouds of sonic decay. Limited edition, of course!
Perhaps it's the most unlikely place to see a performance or an art installation, but the Chapel Of The Chimes in Oakland is a columbarium (an institution that houses cremated remains) that has developed a reputation for hosting artist's installations and sound art events within the dignified, if Byzantine architecture of the space. On the 2005 winter solstice, a handful of Bay Area sound artists performed at the Chapel Of The Chimes dedicated to the "friends in New Orleans," presumably in rememberance of Hurricane Katrina victims. Jim Kaiser (aka Petit Mal) was one of the participants at that winter solstice event, presenting a semi-improvised droned-out atmosphere to meander through the numerous rooms of the Chapel Of The Chimes. Using an array of bowed metals, broken electronics, and effects, Kaiser (who has also recorded extensively as French Radio and NFOrchest) accumulated a variety of fluttered vibrations and scraped tones into a spectral minimalism which parallels the eccentric drone extravangazas of the Taj Mahal Travellers and the obscurant British post-industrial ritualists Metgumbnerbone. Kaiser's drones manage a wraithlike quality without appearing ghastly or terrifying, rather they solemnly hang as a poignant if bleak rememberence to one of the great disasters witnessed by this generation.
Here's one of the 2 new releases from beloved experimental label Utech that we're listing this week, the other being by Suzuki Juzno. Now, before we heard this one, we expected it to be good, 'cause it's on Utech after all, but knowing it was by eclectic French composer Philippe Petite, we didn't know WHAT exactly to expect in terms of sounds - was it gonna be glitchy laptopped electronica? Noisy avant-rock? Droned out soundscapery? Something else? All of the above? Petit has done a lot of things over the years, running both the Pandemonium and Bip-Hop labels, most recently playing in dronesters Strings Of Consciousness... And this is perhaps the heaviest, harshest thing he's been involved with yet, and "all of the above" does just about cover it.
The very first track, "Murmurs", is a collaboration with Justin Broadrick of Jesu/Godflesh/Final/etc. infamy, and that sets the super dark, distorted tone for the whole disc, which consists of 45 minutes of groaning, grinding, grainy, atmospheric instrumental industrial sludge spread over 5 tracks, made with guitars, organs, turntables, percussion, electronic processing, backwards effects, etc... In other words, delightful! That is, if your taste in abstract abrasiveness is at all like ours, partial to passages of subterranean rhythmic skitter mixed with moments of sheer Merzbowian intensity.
The centerpiece of this "Symphonia" is the 16+ minute "Fear Has Fallen", with its martial drumming buried under a sinister miasmic muzz, but the whole disc is quite noisily satisfying throughout. The black clouds of the sleeve art are highly appropriate imagery. Highly recommended!!
The final installment in Tiliqua's Erotic Oriental Sunshine series of Japanese erotic music from the sixties and seventies (the fifth of five!). We reviewed Kokotsu No Sekai from Japanese sexy action heroine Ike Reiko a while back, Kuwabara Yukiko To Anata from Japanese "Play Girl" Kuwabara Yukiko not long after that, and then Modae No Heya from seventies bondage / S&M queen Naomi Tani, music recorded and released in 1979 to commemorate her retirement from the world of porn. And most recently Tokyo Emmanuelle Fujin - Amai Yoru No Tameiki from legendary porn actress Taguchi Kumi. The final installment is, according to the label, perhaps the rarest of the bunch, with original copies fetching thousands of dollars, and to our ears, it's also maybe the best of the bunch, certainly the weirdest.
For those just discovering the wonderful world of Iroke Kayoyoku for the first time, it's a sort of loungy exotica, equal parts Les Baxter and Ennio Morricone, a bastardized version of a more popular Asian music of the time, a funky, groovy, soulful soundtrack music, but sexed up with chanteuse like crooning, and most important of all, an amazing array of moaning and groaning and cooing and giggling, very playful and silly and sexy.
Originally released in 1971 (in keeping with Allan's 1971 music theory, see about a hundred other reviews...), Petite M'Amie was in fact the nickname of Mari Keiko, who could very well be responsible for the very first iroke record, which perhaps explains the relative lack of nudity on the sleeve, Girl Friend - Baby Doll was the seed, from which would sprout a whole genre of sexually depraved sounds...
As her nickname might have led you to believe, Keiko's schtick is innocence, the whole Lolita factor, and boy does she play it up, giggling and cooing, purring in the listener's ear, so sexy and sultry, but very 'little girl' like. The music is similar to the other installments, Morricone-ish spaghetti Western twang, smooth Lawrence Welk muzak, horns and strings, funky and jazzy in places, and on this disc maybe more than some of the others, a bit of psychedelia mixed in. As always, it's all about the vocals though, draped sexily over the strange musical backdrops, Keiko delivers her pitch perfect Lolita tease, culminating in the track "Shower", which is just the sounds of Keiko in the shower, the rushing water, splashing and sloshing, and her cooing and giggling all reverby from the shower's tile walls. Sexy for sure, but still very very strange.
Packaged in a super deluxe Japanese miniature gatefold style cd sleeve, with a printed obi, saucy non-nude photos of Keiko on the cover, and extensive liner notes in English and Japanese!
ULTRA LIMITED!!! Unlike the others in this series, this one was limited to only 500 copies, and is, yep, you guessed it, already out of print. We got a bunch, but if the other volumes were any indication, these will be gone in a flash!
This SF songstress (aka Jessica Peter) continues to make the sweetest of pop music that never topples overboard into the sugar bowl. Her graceful, bubbly piano and lovely voice draws the immediate attention. She can belt it out, or coo in a crystal clarity, or murmur out the merest whispery breath of a vocal. Check out the aching "You Are Perfect". Indeed unlike the dreamy airiness of her previous recordings, here she treads on somewhat darker terrain especially on the sumptuous instrumental interlude "Dark Woods". If you dig other awesome, crafty female singer/songwriters like Mirah or Mary Timony, take note!
Petracovich's We Are Wyoming finds Ms Jessica Peters exploring some different avenues -- for one thing she's given her piano playing more of the spotlight -- but none that bring that fine state in the album title to our minds. This is much more other worldly or at least other timely, perhaps harking back to some old tyme saloon or cabaret... but mind you, not one filled with rowdy drunken louts, women of ill repute and much broken glass. No, this sounds almost as if she hopped aboard a time machine that transported her back so that she could sneak into the place long after closing time to sing and play their rickety old piano all by her lonesome. An accompaniment of glistening electronic textural clouds and shuffly stuttery rhythms magically takes shape out of thin air to swirl around her breathy vocals and warm piano. Much more airy and haunting than her debut Blue Cotton Skin (which leaned more heavily on electronics a la Beth Orton or Massive Attack), this dreamy sophomore release really shows Peter's coming into her own as a songwriter and finding her own voice. So darn lovely!
Petracovich's lilting ethereal female vocals and languid blend of acoustic and electronic instrumentation is very reminiscent of folktronic princess Beth Orton, the off-kilter drama of Jane Siberry and the spritely pretty side of Solex. Definitely sounding as though they took some cues from Massive Attack's Mezzanine and Portishead's Dummy, the deep fluid bass lines ooze around the layers of programmed beats, processed vocals, acoustic guitar and chimey electronics. Quite nice!
Another Italian experimental composer (in league with the likes of Christa Pfangen, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, and Giuseppe Ielasi, who mastered this disc) presents an album on the always-intriguing Die Schachtel label. This belongs to their "Zeit" series documenting contemporary sonic artists and is packaged in a typically handsome digipack (thick matte cardboard, embossed cover design). The title Sintesi Da Un Diario means "abstract from a diary" and that does describe this somewhat: Petronella's music is certainly quite abstract (to use a different sense of the word), and his extensive use of everyday "field recordings" is suggestive of the "diary" angle. It's a detailed, mysterious sound bath indeed, featuring much in the way of rustlings and rumblings, electronic bleep and shimmer, tinkling percussion, obscured talking voices, children playing, clicks and crackle, and more... Petronella is credited with "acousmatics", a term that a little research tells us was coined long, long ago by Greek philosopher Pythagoras to mean "sound hidden from its visual source". Several 20th century composers in electroacoustics and musique concrete, like Pierre Schaeffer and Francois Bayle, have since talked of their work being "acousmatic", and the definition has developed in several directions, one of them having to do with the concept of "reduced listening", wherein the listener processes sound without making any mental/visual references as to the actual source, allowing that sound to exist in and of itself, heard only as timbre, texture, etc.... hmmm all very interesting. We'd have to say that while you certainly can't always tell what's making the sounds found on this particular disc, it's hard to keep your brain from trying to supply some ideas. We need more reduced listening practice! This would certainly be a pleasant way to go about that... or heck just go ahead and use your imagination to make pictures from these sounds, that's fun too.
Latest from the always awesome Khrysanthoney label, who so far have given us killer records from Sleeping Peonies, Clair Cassis, Velvet Cacoon and Necktarium, as well as, in their previous incarnation as Starlight Temple Society, records by Lonesummer, Marsh, Schrei Aus Stein, Nightbringer, Temple Of NOT, Void Of Reveries, Hamnskifte and Roba El Khaliyeh, a pretty varied and musically elite lineup for sure, and yet this new group, a one man band with the cryptic monicker Petrychor, seems to be the perfect addition, another outfit that manages to appeal both to the true grim hordes, while pushing that sound to its very boundaries, creating in the process a distinctly original variant, which us why this stuff is so appealing to the sonically adventurous extreme music obsessives. It's definitely black metal. Frenzied and hyperspeed, blurred riffage, frantic blastbeats, this true grim blackness melded to avant experimental abstraction, conjuring up a sound like a more warm and less wintry, woozy and washed out Paysage D'Hiver, or a less crusty, more melodic Wrath Of The Weak, or even, perhaps more accurately and definitely less distinctly metal, like a drum machine driven, demonic vokill-ed Lovesliescrushing, with a sound that slips from delicate and haunting, all spidery steel string guitar, and what sounds like mandolins, to lush layered choral ambience, and mysterious droney drift, to full on dense blurry blackness.
But the sonic devil is most definitely in the details here. The pretty acoustic parts are not just run of the mill haunting minor key strum over creepy keyboards - it's obvious Mr. Petrychor is an incredible guitarist, unfurling what sounds like some Fahey style Appalachia one second, some wildly percussive, densely strummed Michael Hedges like mesmer the next, even some flamenco style workouts, the (im) perfect and unlikely foil for the heavy parts, which are super distorted, and strangely murky, with the drums weirdly produced, blown out and in the red, sometimes almost like a techno beat, the way they pulse and pound, clipping constantly and creating strange decayed rhythmic thuds that seems to drive the swirling chaotic sonic maelstrom, other times slipping into something that sounds like an IDM style electronic skitter, but buried beneath layer after layer of buzz and thrum and whir. Meanwhile, the riffs are less 'riffy' and more indistinct and amorphous, those 'riffs' seeming to ooze and smear into lush chordal swells, often wreathed in a swirling minor key haze, or roiling beneath warped, churning melodic tangles, rife with haunting synths and what sounds like strings, with a subtle gypsy folk vibe seeming to surface here and there, Petrychor's blast beat-ed whir and thrum less about black metal and more about some sort of abstract blackened ambient buzz, the fierce and obviously intense propulsive crunch deftly transformed into something almost dreamy, without losing any of it's grim energy and chaotic ferocity, culminating in the 14+ minute final track, that again finds blurred riffage, and swirling keyboards held together by a dense Teutonic techno sounding pulse, the sound growing more and more buzzy and murky, before splintering into a wild blacknoise buzzpsych crumble, before slipping into a lush, hushed ethereal outro.
SO incredible. We can definitely see this being our black metal record of the year (and maybe yours too!). The perfect balance of blackened heft and dreamlike shimmer, of buzzdrenched skull caving crush and thick blurry blissout.
And as if that wasn't enough, also included is a second disc, which contains Petrychor's first demo, Dryad, three songs, 23 minutes, a slightly rougher and more raw, but no less blown out and blissed out, version of Effigies And Epitaphs, the same sort of frenzied riffage, blurred swirly melodic heaviness wedded to haunting acoustic guitars and deep dense dronemusic, but the title track here might be the most epic and majestic of the bunch (both records in fact), sounding like a blackened Godspeed playing in triple time, the melodies seeming to spiral heavenward in thick churning clouds of buzz all wreathed in frantic wildly intertwining melodies, while the closer finishes the whole set off with gorgeous and downright creepy chunk of dense black rumble, a thick, undulating sprawl of tarpit blackdronedrift, underpinning haunting piano plinks and some incredible steel string strum, like some seriously sinister otherworldly cinematic black Appalachia.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!!! Housed in a cool 6 panel full color eco-wallet style sleeve with printed insert. Also included is a link to a free download of a third record, a companion release called Artistry Of Exhaustion II.
Ok, this item has a fairly self-explanatory title, eh? Also, here's the subtitle: "From Psychedelic Experiments To Political Propaganda". Interested? If so, then all that really remains for us to say is, yeah, you should seriously consider picking this up, it's really well done and a good value for the money. Physically, this is a gorgeous tome, and all signs point to it being quite accurate and thorough information-wise.
If you're at all like us you're aware that in recent years the spate of reissues from the Swedish psych / prog scene -- like for instance the whole amazing Parson Sound / International Harvester / Harvester / Trad Gras Och Stenar axis -- has been pretty thrilling. Having a guide to both the bands we've heard of and the many, many more that we haven't is pretty great. Also if you're like us you LOVE books full of pictures of record sleeves, wherever they're from and whatever they are. And this book's got tons of album covers, many of them psychedelically sensational, reproduced in full color!
Plus there's loads of factual info for those curious about the bands, or for record collector types trying to figure out what the original vinyl is worth. Each entry consists of info on the band's line-up, a descriptive paragraph discussing their music and history, as well as a detailed discography. Algarnas Tradgard, Arbete & Fritid, Aunt Sally, Charlie & Esdor, Bo Hansson, Kebnekajse, Life, November, Mikael Ramel, Pugh Rogefeldt, Samla Mammas Manna, Trettioariga Kriget, Turid... they're all here and of course plenty more we'd never heard of before.
In addition to this A-Z of bands, there's a band member index and label discographies as well, with that of the Silence label being the most impressive. And, there's also an introductory essay dealing with the political dimension shared by a lot of the music from the Swedish scene. Apparently, in Sweden there was a difference between "prog" with one g and "progg" with two g's, with the former referring as usual to progressive rock bands like ELP and Yes, latter being a distinctly Swedish concept of (not-necessarily virtuosic or complex) music that reflected the ideals of the left-wing Movement of the times.
All in all, very intriguing and tantalizing, leaving us to look at the those album covers and begin dreaming record collector dreams!
235 pages, hardback, 8 1/2" x 12". Full color EVERYWHERE, and lots of cool b&w photos too. A deluxe production indeed. And there's a bonus cd included as well, featuring the obscure jamming psych band Baby Grandmothers, with three previously unreleased live tracks from 1967 (different from the stuff on their archival Subliminal Sounds cd release also reviewed this list).
If only there was a book like this for EVERY cool musical scene past and present...
NB. mailorder customers, be aware that due to the size and weight of this book, it counts as more than one item for freight purposes -- so any order that includes this book will ship UPS at the 3+ items rate of $6.50 for shipping & handling.
After a handful of killer 12"s, some of which were included on those awesome Skull Disco comps, comes the debut dubstep longplayer from Punch Drunk label head honcho Peverelist, a dark and moody collection of stutter and skitter, weirdly melodic in places, reminiscent of folks like Boards Of Canada or Autchre, but fused onto a dubbed out stripped down dubstep chassis, the opener is a low slung groover, but with a dizzying repetitive main melody and a wheezing chordal backdrop, while "Revival" finds Peverelist teaming up with Pinch, for some super blissed out, underwater dubstep drift, skeletal and spare, mysterious and haunting. The rest of the record sort of slips back and forth between the two, shifting from super melodic Warp style skitter, to clipped murky downtempo dub, dabbling in sounds more techno, throughout, culminating in the closer "Clunk Click Every Trip" that adds some Pop Ambience, and some retro synths that make it sound like some sort of John Carpenter dubstep remix. Cool.
The singer who sounded the most like Joni Mitchell on the Numero Group's excellent Wayfaring Strangers: Ladies Of The Canyon compilation, Caroline Peyton was far from a mere imitator. Thus the label gives her a more close-up inspection by re-issuing her debut private press lp, Mock-Up complete with bonus tracks of a live recording and three vocal cuts from The Screaming Gypsy Bandits, an acid rock and jazz outfit Peyton recorded with in 1972. While her songwriting, piano playing and occasionally acrobatic vocal delivery easily place her in the realm of seventies singer-songwriters, Peyton displayed an exploratory penchant for vocal experimentation that was far from the norm. The wordless vocalization of "Bill Monroe" reminds us of a less unhinged Patty Waters, while the Screaming Gypsy Bandit tracks reveal some eastern mystical jazz vibes that makes us want to pay deeper attention. If you're fans of Linda Perhacs, Collie Ryan and other obscure folk mistresses, then check this out for sure!
We had almost forgotten how divisive this record was when it came out way back in 1993. But we were quickly reminded when this reissue dropped just by observing the reactions from some folks, especially women, which is ironic as Exile In Guyville was meant to be this vitriolic girl power bash on one of Phair's exes (dude from Urge Overkill apparently), but lots of the women we know were really put off by this record. Not sure if it Was Phair herself, what she became, or just the whole concept, which could come across as a whinging bitterly about a breakup instead of a powerful kick ass fuck you to a shitty ex, but listening to this again just reminds us that Exile In Guyville is a pretty fucking awesome record. Dark jangly indie pop, with super intense, often harsh, sometimes hilarious lyrics, all wound up with dark melodies, powerful guitars, and KILLER hooks, and while Phair's voice is not necessarily super polished, it totally suits the material, raw, rough, but melodic and sweet, and with a definite edge, often straining for notes she can't reach, but instead of sounding wrong, it ends up sounding passionate and aggressive, sometimes dangerously sexy, other times wistful and sad. Supposedly a song by song reworking of the Rolling Stones Exile On Mainstreet, it's easy to get all hung up on the drama and the fallout, and the post Guyville shitty records Phair released, and the ALL the hype, but fuck all that, this record is awesome. As essential in terms of nineties college rock as the Lemonheads It's A Shame About Ray or a handful of other iconic releases.
Some standout tracks: the could-have-been-a-hit "Never Said with it's soaring chorus and big crunchy guitars, the swirling moody guitar/vocal workout of "Dance Of The Seven Veils" with it's swoonsome falsetto and the (apparently, at the time) shocking use of the word 'cunt' in the lyrics, and of course the most referenced Guyville track "Fuck And Run", and for good reason, a super stripped down jangle, with awesomely bitter lyrics and it's "fuck and run" refrain, the crunchy grinding guitar heavy "Johnny Sunshine", with its dueling vocals and almost choral second half, and maybe our favorite track "Stratford-On-Guy" a loping minor key groove with almost spoken vocals, but all woven around a killer minor key main melody.
What else can we say, we loved it back in the day, it sounds just as good now as it did then. The reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, not essential, but fans will certainly dig. Also included is a dvd featuring a documentary about the making of Guyville, as well as the reaction to the record featuring tons of (maybe not so) random folks including Dave Matthews, Ira Glass, Gerard Cosloy from Matador, Steve Albini and more, as well as Phair in conversation with the man who inspired the record! Interesting and fun, maybe a little self important, but ultimately, all the extra stuff is totally superfluous, as the record as it is, as it was, all on its own, is really all you need, and if you don't already have it, then you really do need it.
Okay folks, this new Liz Phair album is even more fuckin' weird than her last one was (in which she was all tarted up like Avril Lavigne's big sister). First things first dammit, please please please stop the overuse and abuse in recording studios of that 'autotune' vocal processor! From Cher to Bob Mould to Phair, the situation's gotten downright desparing. WTF! Her voice and songs are indistinguishable from those of Lindsayashleekelly Clarksonsimpsonlohan. We guess she's still vying to be the next scientifically formulated and slickly programmed pop starlet... which probably also explains the '70s soft focus style design (feminine hygiene? Judy Blume? soft core?) of the front cover. Ewww. Are you there God? It's just not Phair.
Liz's third album isn't nearly as sassy as her first but let's remind ourselves that there ain't nothing wrong with shopaholics growing up and making the record they always wanted to make and if that means it's smoothed out and radio ready and oh-so Lilith-Fair-y middle of the road, then so be it. Vinyl is 150 gram "audiophile quality".
Take every review that you've read about Avril Lavigne, replace the words "Avril Lavigne" with Liz Phair, and you'll have a perfectly good description of what this album is going for: an impressively produced, commercially viable modern-rock album, complete with insipid lyrics and baby-faced pouting. A bizarre turn of events for the songwriter who delivered an album as gleefully profane as "Exile In Guyville."
Reissue of their '87 six-song demo plus 9 tracks from a live show that recorded that same year. Phantasm, if you don't remember, was the band of ex-Hirax vocalist Katon W. DePena and ex-Metallica bassist (pre-Cliff!) Ron McGoveny. The demo tracks feature drum god Gene Hoglan (Dark Angel, Old Man's Child, Death, etc.). Thrash!!
The label describes The Phantom Family Halo as sounding like Alice Copper, Black Sabbath, Tangerine Dream and Marc Bolan, or Scott Walker fronting Roxy Music. Phew, it's hard not to think this might be the best record EVER given that description. And while this is pretty darn good, it's not quite all that.
The first thing we actually thought when we heard this was Black Mountain. The same sort of seventies hard rocking hippy groove thing going on. Drawled vocals, fuzzy guitars, lazy and laid back, stoned and wasted. But PFH add a healthy dose of spacey synths, drifting new wave ambience, and a bit of a glam swagger to their seventies groove.
It never gets all that HEAVY, and we hear very little Black Sabbath if any at all, but we DO in fact hear PLENTY of T-Rex and Roxy Music, dramatic crooning over swirling glammy grooves and shuffling in the pocket percussion. Definitely the perfect fix for your seventies glittery hard rock stoned groove addiction.
The weirdest thing about this group is definitely the membership/pedigree though. One member is also in a Venom style metal band called Dead Child along with Dave Pajo, as well as drumming for an outfit with a forthcoming Siltbreeze release. While another member was a touring member of the reunited Slint and just happens to be Brian McMahan's (of Slint) little brother.
Super limited. Hand silkscreened. Vinyl-only first edition.
Demo 1 is the debut release from a New Orleans one man band called Phantom Feel, who traffics in a sort of black metal, but a strain far removed from the grim buzz and black blast of most BM, instead, the vibe is much more woozy and washed out, the opening intro is all lush, smeary swaths draped over skeletal skitter and programmed pulses. The track blossoms into mournful almost shoegazingly melodic sweeps, shimmering dreamily over murky muted riffage, and clouds of soft focus hiss, the sound tied together by spidery minor key guitar melodies keening way off in the background, and cool crooned vocals. The vibe is almost cold wavey, a little gothy, much more like a blackened M83 actually. The second track definitely gets a bit more grim, the buzz more to the fore, the sound a bit more bleak and melancholy, the vocals more tortured, but even then, the sound continues to be more pretty and psychedelic than black and malefic.
But flip the tape over, and the sound slips right back into PF's woozy warbly soundscapery, this time strange processed sampled voices, buried beneath a creeping almost Portishead-y style dirge, warm and liquid, lots of thrum and buzz, all blurred and bleary, the black metal riffage here smeared into hazy distant streaks, while in the foreground the haunting sonic haze roils and churns. Gorgeous stuff for sure. And really only barely black metal. In fact, much of this is WAY too weird for meat-and-potatoes metalheads. Much likelier that if you're into strange dark drone music, psychedelic ambience, creepy slowcore, abstract blackened electronica and other twisted sonic strains, then this is for you.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES. Each one hand numbered, and each copy with a hand painted/stamped sigil on the front.
Phantom Limb is a Brooklyn based drone-noise exploratory project that shares some of its members with the clattery improv noise-rock ensemble Peeesseye. It's also one of those projects that claims to channel the creativity all of its members even if they are not present during the recording sessions. Very transcendent, eh? On this production for Gill Arno's art label Unframed, Phantom Limb (here adding the "and Earth's Hypnagogia" to the name) finds just two of the members (Jaime Fennelly and Shawn Hansen) actually recording in the studio, with the absentee members adding their own two cents presumably through astral projection or maybe just heavy drug use.
Fennelly Hansen employ two sets of instruments for this piece: a pair of sine-wave generators and a pair of Farfisa organs. During the first 30 minutes or so of the piece, the two slump over their sine-wave generators which are tuned to an exquisitely body rumbling set of harmonic frequencies. Ones that would make the elder Niblock very proud! When the Farfisas enter the mix with a certain jolt to the narcotic vibe of the sine-wave drones, the mood shifts dramatically towards a sparkling arpeggiation much more in line with the classic Terry Riley pieces of old. Recorded in a single take in a warm sounding room, with all of the rustling and knee shifting that keep the legs from falling asleep. Beautifully designed by Mr. Arno and exquisitely printed by Ben Owen on his letterpress with die-cuts. Limited to 400 copies.
East meets West, two electric guitars meet two organs, a fuzzed out rumbling abstract epic. Phantom Limb just so happens to be 1/2 of Brooklyn noise terrorists PeeEssEye (PSI) who met up with legendary Japanese axeman Tetuzi Akiyama to jam and hang out and the result was this 30 minutes slab of divine droning drift.
Starting out with super spare clatter and rumble, the quartet quickly up the ante, the swirling buzz transforming into huge grinding walls of guitar crumble and amp frying crunch. But this is no simple guitars-against-amps Sunn-drenched dirge. No things get way more interesting. As the guitars start unfurling strange little riffs, repeating and slowly shifting, the organs releasing dense clouds of chordal warmth and ear piercing sine wave skree, everything swaying and shimmering as various internal components twist and transform, gorgeous melancholy melodies appear here and there, haunting angular licks surface, as do strange squeaks and creaks, all the while, a huge soft focus swirl of sound wraps it's fuzzy tendrils around everything. This is definitely noisy, but it's that thick sort of super listenable noise, soothing and dreamlike, more dense and droning than harsh, all the sharp edges rubbed smooth, still explosive and intense and LOUD as hell, but surprisingly blissed out and so subtly serene.
SUPER LIMITED!! ONLY 500 COPIES! We got a bunch but they won't last long...
We first discovered Phantom Limb on the now out of print collaboration with Japanese guitarist Tetuzi Akiyama released on aRCHIVE a few months back. Phantom Limb aka one half of East Coast noisemakers PeeEssEye, brought to the table a cacophony of whirring organs and grinding guitars, a blown out expanse of buzzing drone and strange swirling guitar ambience.
For this disc, Phantom Limb have teamed up with Bison, who as far as we can tell plays contrabass clarinet, and between the two 'outfits' manage to creep and crawl through two half hour slabs of far out drift and roar. the first track see's and saw's back and forth between, blissful tranquility, minimal synthesizer buzz, warm chordal whir and huge grinding slabs of angular low end scrape and squeal, spending more time in the soft than the loud, but the loud bits are extra loud to make up for it.
The second track is one long drone, that works its way through various textures and timbres, it's here that you can really discern the presence of a clarinet, but just barely, this is no free jazz skronk fest, instead, it's a sort of Niblockish war of overtones, slabs of sound beating against one another as tones gradually shift and subtly interact. Dense and deep, layers continually being added and transformed, other layers constantly being peeled away revealing some other strange subtle sonic alchemy underneath. Nice.
Limited to 200, each disc hand numbered.
Packaged in a cool card stock sleeve with printed sticker with liner notes and artwork.
An endless tangle of arpeggiated wheezing organ spurts. Bristling guitar chords grapple with the keyboard mayhem. A primal thump on a skeletal drumkit. Testy male vocals (and some female ones too on the third song "Wrenches And Spoons") sneer, slur and spit out the lyrics. Much creeping, brooding and scowling ensue as the Phantom Limbs' second full length Displacement launches its festering ghoulish assault. Not quite as hyperly confrontational and spastic as their Applied Ignorance debut album, but definitely still draws a great deal of lifeblood from the seminal synth-punk band the Screamers. At one moment you're trapped inside a haunted funhouse long after closing time, the next you're lost deep in the dankest catacombs, and the next you're scrambling to keep step in their three-legged funereal march. Whether intentional or not, this is just in time for Halloween.
Do you hear that din? There's an evil circus brewing up a storm in the bat cave and its name is Phantom Limbs. Yup, they're back with a new EP on their totally appropriate new label home, Gold Standard Laboratories. Still spewin' the ultra convulso-vocals atop churning thick synth lines and a primal stompin' rhythm section. The Limbs' Random Hymns get even more chaotic on the fourth track. With its chopped up dialogue samples (including some from American Movie), gimp-style vocals and overall aggressive dissonance, "Jackalope Rising" takes the listener into what is perhaps the band's most fucked-up and bizarre territory to date. Pretty darn rad.
A hellish new-wave circus. The Screamers meets the Butthole Surfers? No, it's not as good that would be, but Oakland's Phantom Limbs are pretty cool, with interesting and freakish vocals over carnival organ punk. Entertaining live too. With Jello Biafra's
